What if you had to suddenly leave? What about your buyers?

Beverly Level X³

June 25, 2016, 6:31 pm

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What if you had to suddenly leave? What about your buyers?

It's all well and good to talk about suspending your services if you have to go on a 'planned' vacation. But, what about times when you are called away from the house/computer on an emergency? Then you would not have time to do anything more than shut off the computer and deal with real life.

Emergencies happen in real life and you just have to drop everything and deal with them, even if that means walking off and coming back later to pick up the pieces.

As an SEOClerks seller or freelancer, do you have a contingency plan to deal with emergencies that require you to be away for an extended period of time?

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Lynne

Lynne

Well someone mentioned previously that it would be nice to have an option to "shut shop" if for example you are going away on holiday or in an emergency.

I think this would be a great feature, then if there is an emergency you could just click on "shut shop", maybe have an option to add in a message or reason why so your customers know what is happening. Customers could get really annoyed to find they can't access their supplier... but if there is a message like "Hit by truck, in hospital, be back soon!" well then they wouldn't be annoyed!

9 years ago

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hitmeasap

hitmeasap

I have experienced this. I had a bunch of orders in queue and due to personal reasons I had to go. My deliveries where being flagged as late and no matter how much I cared about my deliveries, my clients and my business, I just couldn't handle it at that time.

What I did, when I came back, (I think I was gone for 3 days and I had 24 hour deliveries), was to deliver all my orders, told my clients about what had happened and I offered all of them a refund (mutual cancellation) even though I already delivered everything.

I actually do remember this as it was yesterday.. Only one out of all my clients went with the refund option. That's more than acceptable.

Best Regards,
hitmeasap

9 years ago

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EliteWriter

EliteWriter

That was a great thing to do and in such circumstances it is probably the best option. You cannot forget your family and other commitments from your personal life. In that way you reconciled both responsibilities nicely and in a very good way. I will keep it in mind if it should happen to me.
That is why it would be great to have someone to help you out. But most of us are willing to take up all the work on our own just so as not to sacrifice the quality, at least this has always happened with me.

9 years ago

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Lynne

Lynne

That is nice to hear that almost all your customers were supportive and nice about the situation. I think that once you have built up a good customer base with regular return customers and you have good customer relationships with them then this is the result.
I also had some difficulties with my online store once with my daughter landing up in hospital and my customers (all mommies) were great about it. There were also some shorter periods of time too with sick children and each time my customers were great about it. That is the great side about the niche I am in!

9 years ago

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MasterA

MasterA

If time allows, then I will outsource it to other freelancers so they can do it for me. In an emergency, I don’t mind giving all the profits to the freelancer I outsource it to because keeping clients happy is more important than earning money today as they will more likely to return and give me more business. This is the best option as you won’t risk losing potential customers. However, if this is not possible, then the only thing I would do is refund the money and cancel the job. This is a very bad idea though as chances are, they won’t return.

9 years ago

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ajlancer

ajlancer

Hi Bev thanks for open a question for a such and real issue. Yes! I want to say as like procoder after all we are human. We have to do lot of things out freelancing. We have family and we have to do various emergency work in our life race out of freelancing. So, sometimes we cannot shut all job in proper time and it may take sometimes more from real timeline. I think it should be understandable as a human being. And personally I faced some of my client they do not want to understand even my sickens or religious holiday. For that, I have no suggestion and only refund is solution. Again, if you real human being, you have to have quality to understand other problem.
And my suggestion, SEOclerks has to add a new featured like service status, what is going on with seller? Than upcoming buyer can easily understand.

Thanks by Ajlancer

9 years ago

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EliteWriter

EliteWriter

It is already problematic to deal with orders and buyers when you need to go out for an errand or for a vacation believe me, because what happens is that some buyers just keep contacting you even though I inform them beforehand. Some people understand that we are humans with families, but others don't. If an emergency happens or I have other important family commitments I inform clients and let them now when I will be back. I do not mind that if they cannot wait they hire someone else as since I handle all orders on my own so I cannot give the work to anyone else.

9 years ago

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